Five Receptive Language Supports

As I was thinking about how to start this post, I considered Hannah's recent post about how Speech & Language Pathologists (SLPs) search the internet for information. Since I'm writing this post about how to support children who have a severe receptive language disorder, I'm guessing that this post might come up for SLPs who are doing searches for "receptive language disorder" or "receptive language goals" as they are writing their students' IEPs or their patients'/clients' plans of care. However, this post doesn't have goal ideas as much as ideas about the support that we, as communication partners, can give as we are communicating during our therapy sessions.

Receptive language disorders can make it hard for children to pay attention. What would it be like to have a receptive language disorder? It is impossible, as an outsider, to know what that experience is like, but second-language learning might be a good simulation. When I spend time listening to people speak in Spanish, a language in which I am proficient, it becomes very clear why someone with decreased receptive language skill would lose focus after a while and want to take breaks to do something easier. I know that as I take part in a Spanish-language conversation, it becomes almost painful as the conversation continues and I try to maintain comprehension.

A supportive Spanish-speaking partner goes a long way to help me participate in conversation, so I can empathize with why support is so helpful to children with receptive language disorders, too. One way that I structure speech and language goals is to include a phrase like "...with moderate support." I don't conceive of this support as a process of giving hints that lead the child to an answer that I have deemed correct. Rather, I look at support as a way to diminish the communication barrier so that a child can take part in a natural process of communicating and making connections. Here are five ideas for what this support, whether it's "mild," "moderate," or "maximal," might look like.

Five Supports for a Child with a Receptive Language Disorder

1. Slowing down and pausing to allow processing time.

2. Writing while speaking, and giving the child the opportunity to practice reading/repeating each sentence that you have written. This support is potentially appropriate for any children interested in written words, even if they do not yet read. Writing while speaking serves to slow the adult waaaay down, and gives the child visual indication of word boundaries.

3. Acting out, drawing, or showing pictures while speaking.

4. Repeating the exact same sentence (same words, word-order, and intonation) multiple times.

5. Using language that the child has already learned through her interests (the sentences she can recite from her favorite TV shows, movies, and books, modified to fit the context).